Moms still weigh costs of balancing work, home life

By RAQUEL RUTLEDGEMilwaukee Journal Sentinel

November 8, 2012 12:01 AM

After setting out her children's breakfast, Alicia Moore goes through their backpacks, making sure their homework and papers are in order and their lunches are packed, at her home in Milwaukee, Wis., on Sept. 20, 2012. Moore has a successful career, recently completed her MBA and is a single parent of two children. (Kristyna Wentz-Graff/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel/MCT)Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By RAQUEL RUTLEDGEMilwaukee Journal Sentinel

November 8, 2012 12:01 AM

Huffington says secret to success is overcoming fear

The most important step for women -- in terms of achieving success at home and at work -- is overcoming fear, according to media magnate Arianna Huffington.Huffington, 62, raised two daughters while building the Huffington Post into what has become a Pulitzer Prize-winning news and blog site. She and husband Michael Huffington, a former California congressman, divorced when their girls were young."Fearlessness is like a muscle," Huffington said in an e-mail interview. "I know from my own life that the more I exercise it, the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me. The first time we take that first fearless step, we begin to change our lives. And the more we act on our dreams and our desires, the more fearless we become and the easier it is the next time."And having children actually helps, said Huffington."Just knowing I'm going to see my daughters at the end of the day puts my whole work day in a different light. Even a phone call from one of my daughters during the day can center me like nothing else."Motherhood brings out reserves of courage we never knew we had," Huffington said. "And for me, that courage came in part when I accepted that I was never going to give up my work for full-time parenting, and when I stopped comparing myself with my own mother, the perfect full-time, nothing-else-matters mom."Another key to finding a balance is teaching girls and boys early that a healthy family is about partnership, said Elizabeth English, head of the Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles.Children need to see role models and understand explicitly that having a family is a wonderful thing and having meaningful, engaging work is also a wonderful thing -- for both sexes. And being able to balance those depends on an equal partnership, English said.Aiming to "have it all," isn't good for anybody, she said."The very slogan 'having it all' is just an old notion," she said. "No one can have it all -- man, woman, straight or gay, no one has it all."

-- Raquel Rutledge

Alicia Moore never imagined she'd be sitting behind a desk at the Medical College of Wisconsin with her name on the office door.

Odds were against her. Pregnant at 14, with parents who made it clear they would not raise her baby, Moore wasn't certain she would even finish high school.

But she did. She got up every weekday morning at 5:30, walked her son to day care and went to school. When she graduated, she decided on Marquette University.

Her journey took her through graduation, to a job at United Way, up through a master's degree in management from Cardinal Stritch University and to her desk as diversity coordinator at a college.

Though they might not have been teen moms, they know that balancing kids and a career is, at best, an 18-year-long, high-stakes tightrope walk.

Though many have supportive spouses, Grandma on demand or salaries that afford them live-in nannies or personal chefs, trade-offs remain.

Neither hope nor prayer can put a woman at her daughter's spelling bee and the company board meeting when both begin at 4 p.m. She can sneak in late to one. She can try to Skype. Or she can send someone in her place.

Something will be sacrificed.

Despite the Equal Pay Act approaching its 50th birthday, women still typically earn 80 percent of what men do working in the same industries, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest numbers.

And while women now account for 47 percent of all employed people, fewer than 8 percent of top earners in Fortune 500 companies are women, according to a December report by Catalyst, an international nonprofit that conducts research on women in leadership positions.

Such statistics make it more likely dual-income families will depend on the male to stay in the workforce when deciding who will spend more time at home with children, said Lynne Casper, a sociologist with the University of Southern California and former health scientist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Casper's students tend to think the sexes are fairly equal on most fronts.

"I ask them who sends birthday cards, their mom or their dad?" Casper says. "It's the moms. Women are still taught that we are the caretakers."

And while men are doing more cooking and cleaning, their contribution to household chores still lags. On an average day, for example, 83 percent of women and 65 percent of men "spent some time doing household activities such as housework, cooking, lawn care, or financial and other household management," according to an American Time Use Survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics released in June.

Imbalance prevails

Jennifer Walton, a 41-year-old mom of three from Kohler, Wis., feels the disparity. Walton works 40 to 45 hours a week in the information technology world. Though she works from home, she needs to be logged into her computer and ready to take calls or join meetings at 7 a.m.

Her husband works 50 hours a week as a project manager at an engineering firm.

Their children are 5, 2, and 9 months old.

"Each day feels like I'm sprinting a marathon but I never actually reach the finish line," Walton said. "The biggest challenge for me is getting my husband to pick up the slack and for me not to be bitter toward him for what seems to me to be a rather large imbalance between our responsibilities."

Walton is thankful that her husband does much more than other men she hears about. He changes diapers, takes out the trash and sometimes makes their daughter's lunch. But even then, he might tap her for guidance. He recently asked what he should pack their daughter to drink at school, for example.

"I'm thinking 'As long as you're not serving her up antifreeze, who cares? Do what you want. Just do it,'" Walton said.

Studies from the Pew Center for Research show Walton's experience is not unique.

Working moms are racing around trying to do it all. When surveyed about their time, 40 percent of working moms said they always feel rushed. That compares with 26 percent of moms who stay at home, and tops working dads, of whom just 25 percent said they always feel rushed, according to the 2010 report.

"We have been sold a bill of goods that there is no price to pay, no cost (to having it all). That is totally untrue,"said Carol Michalski, a psychotherapist and life coach and has been counseling women for about 30 years. "Young women are still getting that message that you can have it all, and they are going down in flames. And then they blame themselves."

Weighing the costs

"There are some businesses where you have to project an image that you can do it all," Michalski said. "So say what you need to say and if you can do it, great. But, the point is, there is a price. If it's time you don't get to bond with your baby, ... I'm not putting a value judgment on it. We all have our own values. We all have to decide what price we are willing to pay."

Alicia Moore -- the teen mom-turned-college diversity coordinator -- has considered the costs to her and her children. In 2011, as she worked on her master's degree, her 8-year-old daughter had to drop out of Girl Scouts. And every weekday morning when she drops the children at their before-school day care and her son, now in first grade, stands at the door waving goodbye, Moore admitted, "It hurts.

"A lot of women may look at me and be, like, 'Wow, you kept your kids up till 10 o'clock so you could get a master's degree.' Some people might look down their noses at that a little bit. But I think the trade-off on the other side is so much more beneficial to my children. (On) Dec. 15, my kids are going to be sitting at the Bradley Center, and they're going to see their mom get a master's degree. And they see their mom get up and go to work every day, and that's going to make them better people."